


battle-hardened

by sadlikeknives



Category: Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Werewolf Politics, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:08:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28269633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: It was one of the first rules of living as a lone wolf: it never hurt to be underestimated.
Relationships: Kyle Brooks/Warren Smith
Comments: 9
Kudos: 75
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	battle-hardened

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keerawa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/gifts).



It was one of the first rules of living as a lone wolf: it never hurt to be underestimated. Warren had more or less figured that out for himself somewhere around his second or third encounter with werewolves who didn't like him very much for factors entirely out of his control, well before he ran into another werewolf who was actually like him just outside of Tulsa five years or so into this life. They'd never exchanged names and never seen each other again--probably the other guy was long gone--but he'd given him more useful pointers than anyone else had bothered to thus far, and one of them had taken the form of, "Jesus, you're way up there, aren't you, you've got to learn to hide that shit," and then he'd explained how to do that more effectively than Warren had managed thus far, the little tricks of body language that let other werewolves see you as _less than._ In the century and change since, Warren had honed hiding that shit to an art form. What had felt completely unnatural at first had become second nature, because it _worked._ Pack wolves, especially highly dominant ones, were cocky bastards. They were automatically going to think they were better than loners, so it was easy to convince them that was true. It wasn't lying, not in a traditional sense. It was biding your time. You just showed people what they expected to see--that they were better than you, that you were nothing to them--and they bought it because they already believed it. Warren had gotten out of a lot of bad places by looking less dominant and therefore less dangerous than he was until he could either rip someone's throat out or slip out unnoticed, whichever the situation called for.

He had lived in the Tri-Cities for just long enough that he'd started, dangerous as that was, to think of it as _his_ territory. The local vampires were dangerous enough that most werewolves stayed away...most sane werewolves, that was. When he came home from work one night to a pack of crazies loitering on his porch in full view of the neighbors if they'd been up, ready to warn him off because they'd decided this was their territory now and they didn't need his kind around, he ducked his head and shrunk his shoulders and chose his words very, very carefully, and they were satisfied and left, and as soon as he was sure that they were gone he picked up the phone and made a call.

If he had known that Mercedes Athena Thompson, the Marrok's little coyote girl, had just decided to make the Tri-Cities her home, he wouldn't have made that call, wouldn't have invited Bran Cornick's intervention into the place he'd been carving out a home for himself. He would have done it the risky way, trying to pick off the psychos one by one from the edges until enough of them were gone that he felt he could risk taking the remainder on solo. But he hadn't known, and he was right in the Marrok's backyard, so he'd called in his concerns to the Wallace infant who was the lone wolf guy these days, thinking that when he took it to the Marrok he'd send Charles to solve Warren's problems for him, or at least to help Warren solve his problems. Instead, several days later he came home from the grocery store to find a werewolf in a rental SUV waiting in front of his house.

The man was mixed race, Black and something else that made for a truly spectacular combination, as tall as Warren was and built broader, and he assumed he ranked him, Warren read it in him at a glance. That was fine, Warren could let him think that, could keep his eyes down and show his throat a little. That was how he met Dr. Darryl Zao, who told Warren a world about himself and about what he thought of Warren with the little emphasis he put on 'Doctor' as he surveyed Warren with his battered truck and jeans with a hole in them because it was laundry day in addition to grocery day. Well, classist was better than homophobic, at least. Elitist fucks didn't tend to try to kill him, and Dr. Zao could look down his nose at Warren all he wanted without taking any skin off Warren's own nose, and Warren could keep his gaze downcast and show a little throat, let him read what he expected to see into it.

Warren invited him inside because he didn't actually thrive on airing werewolf business in the front yard in front of God and everyone, and Dr. Zao cast that same slightly disapproving look around Warren's home before explaining that he was second in the Los Alamos Pack, which was about to be relocated, to Dr. Zao's obvious faint dismay, to the Tri-Cities at the Marrok's order. Warren felt a slight, savage glee at the thought of this man getting to find out what it was like to up stakes on your entire life because somebody else said so (even if Dr. Zao was probably getting a very different experience than Warren usually did, with, what, movers, real estate agents, proper notice at his job, a bunch of his friends coming with him), but most of his brain was occupied with cursing himself for a fool for making that phone call in the first place.

Dr. Zao finished up his spiel with, "My Alpha was informed there was a lone wolf already living here who was not part of the current...unpleasantness, and he asked me to inform you of these developments."

"I don't want any trouble," Warren said, because the only other thing he could say was, 'I can leave,' and Dr. Darryl Zao had said nothing to indicate that was the plan, so Warren didn't want to put it in his head.

"That's good, Mr. Smith. We don't want any trouble, either. If you don't make any trouble, there won't be any trouble." Warren did not point out that this was not a very good speech, nor that in his experience that was not usually how it shook out. It would do him no good to say either of those things, so he kept them behind his teeth as Dr. Darryl Zao got back into his rental car and drove away.

He took his groceries inside and put them away, and then he packed a go bag and stowed it behind the seat of the truck, just in case. He debated putting the Spencer with it, but if he got pulled over for some reason he didn't want to get in trouble for the gun. When it inevitably went to hell, he'd just have to risk sneaking back for it, if it came to that. He toyed briefly with moving somewhere he wouldn't share a wall with civilians, but Hauptman had a good reputation, surely he didn't run the kind of pack that wouldn't care about things like that, and he might not like Warren moving but remaining within his territory. He'd stand his ground but keep his head down, and see how far that took him.

A few months later, Adam Hauptman called him and asked him to come over to his new house at lunchtime the next day, and Warren figured that that was it, that he was tired of him being closer than Warren had ever figured to be, between the job and his friendship with Mercy, and was going to tell him to get gone. He didn't think he'd ever been summoned to the Alpha's house for that before, but maybe it was some newfangled power play. He put the Spencer behind the seat of his truck before he went, and cast around the house, somewhat helplessly, for anything else he wanted to take with him. He couldn't think of anything. Back in the day, of course, he would have grabbed his saddle, but he'd sold his last saddle to buy gas money to get here in the first place, and hadn't had cause to buy a new one. Other than that, he was used to losing and replacing everything, over and over. They were just things. He'd get by without them.

He finally remembered his damned phone charger, and took the book he was in the middle of, even though it was a reread, and put it in the go bag with it, zipped it back up, put the seat back up and drove over to Hauptman's, where instead of kicking him out of the territory Hauptman asked him to join his pack.

After a long, stunned silence, Warren finally managed to point out, "I'm gay." Hauptman had to be aware of that; for one thing Hauptman was _hot._ Not Warren's type, sure, but hell, he wasn't _blind._

"I don't care who you fuck," Hauptman said, blunt and crass to get the point across, "as long as everyone's legal and consenting. I care about whether you can follow orders. Charles Cornick says you're a good man, and Mercy vouches for you. That's all I need to hear."

Warren blinked at him a few more times before saying, "I wasn't aware he had formed an opinion of me." Sure, their paths had crossed a time or two, and Charles had never had to kill him, so now that Warren thought about it, he supposed that did put him into some upper percentile of werewolves Charles had dealt with over the years. Good grief. Hauptman just shrugged, as if to say, 'I know, right?' and Warren circled back around to the point, which was, "It isn't _done."_

"It hasn't been done," Hauptman reasoned. "Somebody has to be the first, if that's going to change. Why not you? Why not us?" Warren didn't have an argument for that that wasn't years of fear speaking, so he said nothing, and Hauptman asked him, "So how about it, Warren Smith? Will you join my pack to live, to fight, to hunt, to run under the moon? This isn't formal," Hauptman warned him. "There'll be a party later, to introduce you to the pack and make it official. And you should study the pack handbook first."

They had a pack handbook. How...modern. Warren stared at him for another long moment, and when Hauptman--Adam--didn't retract the offer, didn't say, "Just kidding, get out," or something of that ilk, just looked at him expectantly, maybe even hopefully, he finally said, "All right. Yeah."

It was very good it that hadn't been formal, because Warren was to learn shortly, while studying said pack handbook, that that had been very much not the correct phrasing for his response, although he supposed he could have figured that out on his own if his brain had been fully functional. Adam beamed at him like he'd said something great nonetheless.

"Is your pack going to have me, is the real question."

"We've got a few who'll be assholes," Adam said, still cheerful, "but I think they'll be a minority. You'll...hmm. The usual thing is to let rank settle out organically, but you're _very_ dominant, aren't you?" Warren cursed that he hadn't bothered to hide it, because he'd thought he was getting tossed and Adam Hauptman, the most dominant werewolf in the Americas not named Cornick, ranked him by a country mile anyway, and he cursed that Adam was sharp as a tack. "You'll have to go above Paul or I think it'll get ugly."

"You don't think much of my temper, do you?" Warren asked, teasing, testing.

"You haven't met Paul yet," Adam said, wry. "The problem is, Paul is third." Warren's mouth went dry, and he stared at Adam openly for a moment before dropping his gaze. "I know you've met Darryl," Adam said.

"I have."

"He thinks you're less dominant than him."

"He does," Warren confirmed. It wasn't a lie. They both heard the things they both weren't saying, though. Warren kept his eyes down, watching Adam from below his eyelashes despite the difference in their heights, while the Alpha thought about it.

"You could be third." It was almost a question, but not quite. Adam nodded and said, more decisive, "You could be third. I'll tell them you'll be third." Like it was as easy as that.

"Will they have me third?"

"They should. They'll be relieved to skip over the fighting. Paul will still probably challenge you eventually, but I expect you can handle him. I...don't think they would have you second."

Adam looked at him steadily, eyes filled with something oddly like regret, and waited for his reply. Warren said, "No. I don't expect they would."

When he left Adam's, he drove back to his house--drove home--on autopilot, put the Spencer back in its place and unpacked his go bag on autopilot. The last thing he took out was the last thing he'd put in: he set his copy of _Persuasion_ down on the table beside his bed, then sat down on the mattress, put his head in his hands, and let himself cry for the first time in years, wept until he'd gotten it all out and was as ready as he was ever going to get to start anew.

A few years later, he was finishing recovering from being mauled by a vampire sorcerer at Kyle's house--Kyle had insisted, because his place had central air and they were still in the middle of the worst heat wave they'd seen in years, and Warren hadn't argued for the same reasons--when the doorbell rang and Kyle started to get up to see who it was. Warren already knew who it was, through that odd nebulous sense of _pack_ , and he gently pushed him back onto the couch and limped out to open the door himself.

Darryl said, "We need to talk," and Warren slammed the door in his face.

"That was very mature," Kyle told him from somewhere behind him, but he sounded sympathetic. Kyle did not like Darryl much, probably because the first several times he'd met him he'd been around to poke Warren to see what he would do. Darryl was young and liberal enough to have struggled with the idea that the _only_ reason Warren had been a lone wolf was structural homophobia, so he'd kept testing him, pushing, watching for some hidden instability or disloyalty, for way too fucking long--and maybe, too, his wolf was savvy enough underneath Darryl's human preconceptions to have realized there was, in fact, something slightly off about Warren, at least in relation to Darryl. They'd finally gotten that sorted out and now...now this.

Now he knew the truth.

Warren scrubbed one hand over his face.

The doorbell rang again.

He mouthed, "Fuck," but didn't let himself actually say it, since the people outside would have heard it, and opened the door again; gestured for Darryl and Auriele, who was of course beside him, to step inside. He closed the door, and they paused to stare at Dick and Jane for a moment.

"I want to be very clear on this," Kyle said, and it wasn't his Marilyn Monroe voice, it was the one he hid beneath it, the voice of a man sharp enough to cut down to the bone. It was the man Warren loved, leaning there in the doorway to the living room, dangerous as hell with his arms crossed over a t-shirt with what Warren thought was the catchphrase of one of the queens from _Drag Race_ on it in glittery script. "If you break my house, you _will_ pay for it, and my shit is _expensive."_

Darryl had the good grace to wince, and Auriele muttered, defensive, "That was--there were...extenuating circumstances--"

"I don't give a fuck," Kyle told her crisply. He gave Darryl one last dismissive once over, then turned his back on them and went back to his show.

"We need to talk," Darryl said again.

"We absolutely the hell do not," Warren countered.

"I don't--I just-- _how?"_

"What," Warren said, "like it's hard?" Kyle, who he'd never expected not to eavesdrop, snorted with amusement, clearly recognizing both phrasing and tone. Warren was pretty sure Auriele did, too: she looked surprised by it. The thing was, it wasn't hard. Not to him. "Honey does it, when she remembers to." Honey, God love her, was old-fashioned enough that she tried to act like the submissive wolf; genuinely believed that was her proper place in the pack because it was her mate's place. She was fairly terrible at it except for when she was using it to deliberately manipulate someone, but then Warren doubted he could have pulled that big of an act off full time, either. At least he only had one person to worry about. "People see what they want to. You saw what you wanted to." Darryl winced again. "And I let you see that. I just--" How to phrase this, so as not to say anything he couldn't take back? Well, there was the truth. "They wouldn't have me second, Darryl. They won't. Next time I go back to Adam's I'm probably gonna have to fight Paul, who apparently thought he could waltz in and murder me with Adam and Samuel Cornick _in the room,_ and that right after Samuel had spent a fair amount of time and energy on keepin' me from dyin'." This was quite a speech on his healing throat; he was getting hoarse on top of losing his g's from emotion. Great. "And sure, that's more about Paul being a goddamned idiot than anything else, but: they won't have it."

"So you just--"

"Yeah," Warren said before he could finish that sentence. "So I just. Just don't...think about it too hard, okay? Just let it be. They'll let me be third, so...let me be third. Please. It's what's best for everyone." It was, too, was the thing. He could say that, he decided. "You're a good second." Warren? Hell, Warren had barely known how to not consider other werewolves a threat waiting to happen when he'd joined the pack.

"I don't like it."

"You're young," Warren told him. "You'll learn. A lot of the time it's not about likin' it. It just is what it is." 

He opened the door again, wordless, and Auriele nudged Darryl's elbow. "He's right," she said. "Let's go." She shot Warren a look he couldn't fully parse on her way out the door. Auriele, too, was very dominant, and she too had had her place in the pack dictated by outdated werewolf bullshit. They didn't like each other much, he and Auriele, but they understood one another better than he and her husband ever had.

She hesitated on the doorstep and asked, "You gonna kill him?"

Warren told her the truth: "We'll see." It was definitely tempting, but letting him live was its own statement, and then Adam wouldn't have to deal with a body. At least Auriele had no delusions about how the fight would go. She nodded and turned away, and Warren closed the door behind them and rested his forehead against the cool wood for a moment before he went back to sit down beside Kyle, who wordlessly pulled his head down to his shoulder and ran his fingers through Warren's hair, even as Warren could feel his indignation on his behalf in every line of his body. A few weeks ago Kyle had been nothing like this okay with all of this. A few weeks ago they had barely been speaking. And Warren knew that they should have an actual adult conversation about all of that, and they would, but for right now he was going to just let himself enjoy this.

After a few minutes, Kyle admitted, "I get it." Of course he did. He did the same thing in his human way, it was just that when he turned around and ripped their throats out he generally did it in a figurative sense, and he'd never had to do it over a period of years like this. "I just hate it."

"You're young, too," Warren told him. "It's fine." Kyle made a dubious noise. "It's not forever." Every year, the pack got more accustomed to his presence, and now that Darryl had decided to give up not trusting him, they were getting easier with him all the time. Eventually, things would shift. Eventually, he could stop lying once and for all. He could be patient until then.

He'd come this far, after all.


End file.
